Girl Raped in Foster Care Wins $7 Million

Los Angeles County was ordered Friday to pay $7 million in damages to a 9-year-old girl who was repeatedly raped and burned with cigarettes while living in a county-approved foster home.

Retired Superior Court Judge Harold J. Ackerman, who returned to the bench to hear the case on special assignment, found that the county had been negligent in failing to protect the girl while she was living in a foster home from 1981 through 1983. The child’s name was not disclosed.

“This case is the first of its kind in the country,” said attorney Jerry Ramsey, one of three lawyers who represented the girl in a monthlong trial. “This case definitely establishes that there are mandatory duties” by Department of Children’s Services employees.

Chronic State of Terror

In the victim’s case, Ramsey said, county workers failed to remove the girl from the foster home even after a psychologist found that she was in a chronic state of terror and demonstrated pathological behavior.

Neither Marc Wodin, the lawyer who represented the county in the case, nor a spokesman for the county counsel’s office could be reached for comment Friday.

The girl spent her first 11 months in a foster home for infants before being assigned in February, 1981, to the home in which she was raped, tied and burned, according to Ramsey. He said she was adopted and moved to a new home at age 3 1/2.

Called as a witness in the trial against the county, the girl testified that she had been repeatedly raped by her foster father, Walter Washington, now 70, while living in the Los Angeles home, Ramsey said.

In an earlier criminal proceeding, Washington pleaded guilty to felony child endangering in 1986 and spent a year in prison and two years on probation, according to Ramsey. During the civil trial, Washington denied raping his former charge, the lawyer said.

The girl demonstrated signs of mental distress while she was still living in the Washington home, Ramsey said. He said that social workers, who failed to visit the home for months, eventually found her to be glum, mute and robot-like.

And, while authorities were aware of the little girl’s pathological condition, Ramsey said, she was permitted to remain in the Washington home. After she was adopted, her adoptive parents sought therapy for her. The young girl is still undergoing treatment, he said.

“It was (in her adoptive home), after several months, that she revealed that she had been sexually molested in the Washington home,” Ramsey said. “They sent her to Daniel Freeman Hospital for examination.”

Hired Attorneys

Then, the parents hired attorney Linda Wallace Pate and the other lawyers to bring suit against the county.

“I think this judgment has a major significance regarding the accountability of Los Angeles County to foster children,” Pate said after Friday’s decision. “I have concerns that they continue to deny that they have duties. Consistently, they failed to perform the mandatory duties to protect children. The county seems to be making their own rules as they go along.”

Pate said she represents 12 other children who have been abused in Los Angeles County foster homes and she plans “to pursue them vigorously.”

Times staff writer Lois Timnick contributed to this article.